Inconvenient truth

Sorry about the wait!

Chapter Seven


He glanced up at Naruto’s face, noticing his eyes were closed. His gaze jerked back down to his teammate’s stomach and he took a deep breath.

“What are you doing, teme?!”

Naruto’s sudden voice drew a explosion of breath Sasuke didn’t know he’d been holding as he tentatively swabbed down his chest.

“Nothing!” He shot back, trying to keep his cool. He looked back up at Naruto’s face, surprised to see his eyes still closed. He swallowed.

“You…have to lay back for me to do this one down your middle…” He grasped for something to break then tension, then snickered briefly in his mind. “All your fat is making too many rolls and it’s hard to get it all…”

He waited for the explosion and Naruto didn’t disappoint.

“FAT?! Who the hell are you calling fat, damn teme!” Naruto’s eyes flashed open, the anger disappearing when he saw the mirth reflected in Sasuke’s. He scowled anyway and poked at his own stomach with a ridged finger. “This is all muscle, hear me! See? Look! ALL Muscle!” He grabbed Sasuke hand and rubbed it over his bare stomach. Sasuke jerked away as if he’d been burned, his face flaring red as he quickly turned to the side to hide the flush.

“Fine! Like I even care! Let’s just do this so I can leave your dumb ass and go do some training!”

Naruto snorted and lay down on his back, crossing his arms and then wincing when they rubbed on the burn. He sulkily braced them behind his head and turned his face to the side away from Sasuke.

The Uchiha took a deep breath and got himself under control. His hand still itched where Naruto’s hot skin had made contact with it. He clenched it into a fist briefly, trying to dispel the feeling before turning back to his task.

He swabbed gel down Naruto’s chest, his gaze traveling an inch or so in front of his hand. Naruto shivered slightly when he brushed over the edge of the seal. Curious, he did it again and Naruto grumbled something under his breath. He did it again and Naruto hand shot down and grabbed his own, jerking it away from the seal.

They stared at each other for a few tension, confusion-filled seconds, the only movement in the room being a slow drip of fluid from the swab currently being crushed in Sasuke’s hand.

“Sasuke. Leave now please.” Naruto asked in a quietly dangerous voice, sitting up and moving away slightly on the bed. Sasuke blinked in confusion.

“What?”

“I said, you can leave now. I can do the rest by myself.”

Sasuke blinked again. Naruto had never spoken in this tone before and even though it was strange and almost a little scary, part of him flared up in demand.

“No!” He seemed as surprised at the sound of his own voice as Naruto was, his blue eyes widening then suddenly narrowing as he realized that Sasuke wasn’t about to leave. He opened his mouth to order him out, his discomfort rising by the second, but Sasuke cut him off with an angry wave of his hand.

“No! I won’t just go! You can’t order me around like I’m some kind of slave, dobe! I’m your friend and I’m trying to help you! You can’t keep pushing people away like this!”

Yet another impromptu speech. It seemed Sasuke was going for the Most-Disturbingly-Uncharacteristic-Affectionate-Dialogue-In-A-Single-Evening Award.

Naruto’s eyes couldn’t have been wider.

Again Sasuke shut his mouth with a snap, horrified at his own words. He’d just accused Naruto of the very crime he committed himself of a regular basis.

Such irony.

It seemed Naruto was too shocked by such a turnabout tactic that he just blinked a few times, his eyes wide like a rabbit realizing that there is, in fact, only one moon and the two it thought it saw were, in fact, headlights.

He swallowed thickly in the silence and, to Sasuke’s amazement, gently released his hand and slowly lay back down on the bed, closing his eyes.

Sasuke froze for a few seconds, confused himself as to what had just happened. Naruto had fallen without a single fight, or back-comment.

He came to realize that the swab in his hand had been crushed beyond all repair and to continue meant retrieving a new one from the bathroom.

He gingerly dropped the old one and stood from the bed, watching Naruto’s face. His eyes didn’t open but his body suddenly seemed tense, as if he expected Sasuke to leave.

The Uchiha murmured a reassuring few words that he was just retrieving another swab from the bathroom and went to do so.

The rest of the burn treatment was filled with awkward silence that seemed do become worse as the minutes dragged on. Finally Sasuke was finished and after packing up the supplies he sat on the edge of the bed.

He heard Naruto shift slightly, and could feel the gaze on his back.

“Why are you here?” Came the soft question, so many things twisting through it.

Sasuke opened his mouth then closed it again. He turned his head a fraction, catching vivid blue eyes for a split second before he turned back.

“I…our team, needs you to…get better faster. So we can train. Become stronger. Kakashi-sensei says we need you to be there, for teamwork…things…” He trailed off, realizing he was rambling about nothing.

He stiffened as Naruto tried to sit up and groaned, finally accomplishing it. His arm brushed against Sasuke’s as they sat next to each other and the Uchiha tried not to flinch away. Naruto turned his head to face him and Sasuke refused to look at him.

“Sasuke.” Naruto said, the tone forcing him to turn and look, captured by the slightly hurt look in the other boys eyes.

“Is that…is that the only reason?”

Sasuke’s eyes dropped as the tops of his cheeks flushed, turning his head away. He needed to get out of there, fast, before he said anything dumb.

Still, as he shot to his feet, his traitorous mouth forced out some of those words anyway.

“You…you need someone to take care of you…” He mumbled as he fled the room, scattering medical supplies in his wake. Naruto heard the front door slam and Sasuke’s hurried feet down the staircase, the almost frantic crash as the entrance door closed after him.

Naruto’s mouth swung open before he smiled. It stared off slow, a barest curling of his lips, crinkling of his eyes, before bursting into a full-blown grin, blindingly bright in it happiness.

Someone cared about him. Someone worried over him and thought about him. Someone wanted to make sure that he was alright.

And that person was…his most precious person too.

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This WILL be continued! It's just having...a holiday at the moment!

I realize a lot of things were unexplained such as to why Kyuubi wasn't healing him properly and why, if he was so sick, wasn't he in the hospital. I took great liberty with these things, basically just that whatever it was he drank was chakara-disrupting so the Kyuubi couldn't do it's job properly and well, everyone hates Naruto, so most likely the hospital wouldn't have been such a safe place to be anyway...

Well hope you all enjoyed it! Please review! Thanks again to all the wonderful people who've reviewed so far!